Words You Never Use In Sales

Words have power. And while many words have the power to help you make the sale, some words have the power to sabotage it. If you want to increase your sales, here are nine words you should avoid using with prospects and customers.

1. “No”
People hate to hear no. They love to hear yes. So whenever you’re tempted to say no to someone, stop and think how you might be able to yes to their request. This is not to say you should give away the store. Rather, look for ways to make things happen instead of automatically justifying why you can’t. If you cannot find a way to accommodate their request, instead of saying “no”, tell them what you can do.

2. “Can’t”
Speaking of “can’t,” this is another word that can anger and frustrate prospects and customers. Instead of dwelling on what you can’t do, focus on what you can do. Provide options and alternatives. Remember, you’re there to assist and serve your customers.

3. “Policy”
Here’s a news flash: I don’t care what your policy is. I only care about what I want and need. If you can deliver that, you’ve got me as a customer. If you quote “policy” as the reason you “can’t” do something, you’ve lost me. Probably forever.

4. “Don’t”
The human brain can only process a negative by thinking of the positive. Which means, when you tell your prospect “Don’t judge a product by price alone,” what they really hear (on a sub-conscious level) is “Judge a product by price alone.” When you say “Don’t worry,” they hear “Worry.” Tell your prospect or customer what you want them to do, not what you don’t want them to do.

5. “But”
The word “but” negates whatever came before it. (“You did a good job, but…”) Replace it with either a simple pause or the word “and.”

6. “Why”
Questions that start with “why” sound accusatory and judgmental. (“Why did you do that?”, “Why do you think that?”, “Why is that important to you?”) As a result, they cause prospects and customers to raise their defenses. Instead, rephrase “why” questions into “what” or “how” questions. (“What caused you to do that?”, “How did you come to think that?”, “What’s the reason that’s important to you?”)

7. “Honestly”
Whenever you use the word “honestly,” you imply that some or all of the other things you’ve said have not been honest. Strike the word from your vocabulary. The same goes for words like “truthfully” and “frankly.”

8. Any Term of Endearment
While words like “buddy,” “pal,” “baby” and “sweetheart” are fine with your close friends, they’re not okay to use with prospects or customer. You should always be polite, courteous and respectful. The best thing you can call a customer is their name.

9. Profanity
I shouldn’t even have to mention this. If you’re looking for a sure-fire way to offend a current or potential customer, this is it. Never chance it. You’re not a stand-up comic in a nightclub. You’re a sales professional. Speak accordingly. Even if your prospect or customer uses profanity, you do not.

Effective Sales Training

I want to discuss what I see as 4 critical to quality aspects of sales training.

  • Tap into existing team’s knowledge and skills
  • Have frequent, periodic, training
  • Measure sales performance
  • Try different sales training strategies

You don’t teach a child to ride a bike by riding around yourself while they watch. You have to get the child on the bike with your support and advice.  Effective sales training is handled the same way.

Most professional sales training providers teach sales strategy at the 30,000 foot level. Though this might be helpful to the sales management team, it isn’t very helpful for the individual sales people. Each sales person has different skills and knowledge, strengths and deficiencies. Teaching at the 30,000 foot level will not be effective in addressing this uneven terrain, which exists at the 10 foot level.  To be fair, an outside sales trainer does not have the time or resources to leverage this knowledge into their training program.

Bringing in an outside sales training professional is not a bad idea if you are targeting the correct people in your organization. The right people will probably be your sales management team, in a train the trainer approach.  In other words, teaching your sales management team how to teach sales. This approach leverages the sales training professional’s knowledge into your organization’s sales domain knowledge so that it can be brought to bear over the long haul instead of over a brief training session.

Actually, the best available resources to teach the individual sales people in your organization are your own most skilled and knowledgeable sales people. Leveraging their knowledge with that of the business’s sales domain knowledge is a potent way to develop your sales staff.

Training should be done periodically and often. This training is part refresher training and part skill development training.  A well managed sales team is like a well maintained hedge.  When maintained daily and carefully, the hedge stays attractive. But, if you neglect it, it will grow out of control and lose its beauty. Additionally, if after neglect you try to rein it in, you may kill it. Having frequent, periodic, training for you sales team will keep the team focused, nimble and effective. We have a sales training hour every Wednesday morning at 8:00 AM. We also have an hour of standardization training every other week in small groups.

Measuring performance sounds easier than it actually is. Are you measuring the right things and are your measurements accurate? Bernie Smith has made a post on this blog titled, “Measuring Things? Here’s a Way to Scare Yourself”.  This is good piece and should be read by anyone who is in the measuring business. Check out Bernie’s blog at “madetomeasureKPIs.com”. The key is this; make sure that the measurements you use to gauge your sales team’s performance, incentivizes them to do the things you want done. For example, closing percentage targets are easy to make if you are giving margin away. Profit margin per sale is easy to make if closing percentage is not important.

Not everyone learns the same way. Some learn best by seeing, some by hearing, and just about everyone by doing. What this means is that sending email, giving away books, and talking are never going to be enough.  No matter how you approach a particular training session, always include “doing” as part of the learning process. By changing the learning media from time to time, as well as the trainer, the learning process stays fresh.  A while back I wrote a sales tip on the bathroom mirror at the office. It only took minutes for the message to get around. It was new and fresh, and the sales staff was eager to share the tip. I waited two weeks and changed the message.  The change was not noticed for several days. The original tip became old and stale, which lead to the sales staff ignoring it. When I changed the message, no one was paying attention to what was written on the mirror anymore.

Here is the key tip regarding training anyone to do anything. People need coaching, not programming. Trainees need information that is relevant to them, fresh, and requires practice to integrate into their personal processes.

Sales Stratgey

Businesses only exist as a result of consumers who purchase their products or services. Consumers drive the economy. This is why successful businesses focus on the needs of the consumer in order to fulfill the needs of the business. In plain English, this means that if you want to successfully grow your pay check, make sure that you understand and satisfy the needs of the shoppers who reach your phone or store. God bless them every one.

Avoid Being a Commodity in the Sales World

According to Wikipedia:
“A commodity is a good (product)…. which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market…. the market treats it as equivalent, or nearly so, no matter who produces it….one of the characteristics of a commodity good is that its price is determined as a function of its market as a whole.”

As you drive along looking for gasoline, and you see multiple gas stations, how do you choose which service to use? Most people chose the least expensive, thereby treating gasoline as a commodity. Quality is considered equal across the suppliers and, as a result, is not a part of the shopper’s decision making process.
No matter what you are selling, you don’t want your product or service to be treated like a commodity. Without differentiation, you are like driftwood and have no control over your sales. Product or service differentiation is what gives you control over the market.

The best way to differentiate yourself, and what you are selling, is to begin with the awareness that the shopper is looking for a solution, not a price. The shopper cannot evaluate prices without first understanding the solution options.

Consider the game show “The Price is Right”. A contestant has to choose between Door Number 1 or Door Number 2, without knowing what is behind the doors. The decision is a hard one if the only thing you have to work with is price. This is why it is not a good idea to start any sales pitch with price. You are forcing the shopper to think commodity.

When you start by trying to understand the need and present a solution that fits that need, the shopper is now focused on differentiation. What you are trying to get to is relevancy. When the shopper can say “yes” to what you are saying (even if silently in their mind) you are moving toward a closing opportunity because you are in tune with them.

Next, understand that the solution and the price are related. Once the solution options are understood, the price becomes relevant. For example, if I say that I can sell you a calculator for $100.00, your first question is what kind of calculator is it and what can it do. You are not in a closing situation. If I tell you that I can sell you a calculator that can evaluate and trade stocks with a single key stroke based upon an algorithm used by Warren Buffet, and it only costs $100.00, you are in a closing situation.

Here is the formula to avoid being a commodity. Find out what the shopper needs, offer them a solution that fits their need, then price the solution accordingly. Always be pricing is a bad strategy. Always be closing is a good strategy.

Content vs Context

Whether you are involved in a Six Sigma Project or just talking with friends we are bombarded with information that has two components.  These are content and context. One is raw information about the “what” and the other is supporting information about the “why”.

Here is an example. A young man from Philadelphia shot and killed another man about a year ago.  This is content. The fact that he did this, as a soldier, in a fire fight in Afghanistan is context.  Content, as mentioned above, gives you the raw information and context helps you interpret the content.

When you grasp the importance of the relationship between content and context, you also begin to understand why listening skills are so important. As content information reaches your brain, contextual data is telling you how to interpret it.  As good listener will be critically analyzing the information to determine its believability, relative importance, the deliverer’s purpose, the meaning behind the words and what information is missing.

Marketers use contextual information to try to spin your interpretation of content information on everything from products and services to politics. Knowledge that this is happening and dealing with it appropriately is key to your personal success. Do you remember the Ivory Soap by line that stated that their soap was “99 % Pure”?  This is context without content. The question you should ask is 99% pure what?

In a Six Sigma project, contextual data is critical to drilling down to root causes. For example, simply pointing out that there is an increase in the defect rate of a manufacturing process is the content. Finding out that the defect rate spikes on the midnight shift when it is raining is the context. The drill down process can be represented mathematically as y=f(x)+f(x)+f(x)… . The progression from f(x) to f(x) is accomplished through the use of contextual information.

In sales, content information might be described as what product or service a shopper wants to purchase. Contextual information would be the shopper’s story, their buying motivation, budget and important product or service requirements. What this means is that as a business, you differentiate yourself from your competitors by way of context. The shopper can get the “what” from other sources. Context determines why they should get the product or service from you.

Another Sales Strategy

To close a sale, the prospect must see themselves buying from you. In order for this to happen, you must do two things.

First, enter the conversation that is already happening in the shopper’s mind. For a shopper buying out of necessity it is probably a conversation about cost, wanting the problem to go away, and avoiding a mistake.  For a non-necessity shopper the conversation is probably more about being is a hurry to possess the product or service. It is really like a fix to a junky.

Second, create a mental picture, in the shopper’s mind, that defines success as a result of buying from you. To do this you must first understand what success looks like from the shopper’s perspective. For the necessity buyer the picture may not involve what they are shopping for, but include instead the result of the purchase. If the shopper’s car is broke down and they are having problems getting to and from work, the picture might be how, after buying the repair part from you, the shopper is driving their own automobile to work without worrying about a breakdown. The product or service is probably not an important part of the picture.

For the non-necessity shopper, the picture may be that of the shopper using the product or service in the way they have presented the need. For example, if the shopper discloses that they want to be able to get their email anywhere, anytime; you will want to present scenarios where the shopper can visualize themselves using this new smart phone in various locations, while at the same time receiving an important email. The product or service is an important part of the picture.

In any case, the shopper and their motivation is the driving force behind any purchase they might make. You and the product you sell is not the driving force, but instead the road or map the shopper must follow to successfully meet their need or desire.

Necessity and Non-Necessity Shoppers

From a very simplistic perspective, shoppers buy in one of two modes. I am calling these “Non-Necessity Purchases” and “Necessity Purchases”.

Non-necessity purchases are made to fulfill a need that is emotion based and acts like a “fix”, creating a high with the shopper. This buying mode is addictive because the high is focused on the front end of the “want-decide to buy-purchase-live with” (WBPL) cycle. After the purchase, the high wears off quickly leaving the buyer hungry for more. This shopper has a lower instance of customer service issues because their focus is on the beginning of the cycle where the high is instant and short lived.  They really want a new one because the fix is based on the “thrill of the kill” associated with the purchase, not with long term ownership.

The non-necessity shopper has convinced themselves that they need or want something to enhance their lives. These shoppers probably know something about what they want and have already scoped out where they can find it. This is a highly qualified prospect only if your product or service is capable for giving them their fix or emotional high.

There are three points to the sales process for the non-necessity shopper.  These are:

  • Sales person must understand the desire(s) of the shopper.  What need is the shopper trying to fill?
  • Frame the presentation of the product or service within the definition of the shopper’s desires.
  • Make it easy and quick to buy from you. Close the deal while the shopper is on their emotional high.

In an earlier article of mine, I defined the Shopper’s Journey.  This journey has 6 steps. Awareness, learning, liking, preferring, conviction, buying. Tying this together with pull selling you have:

  • Awareness: The shopper knows you are able to fulfill their desire.
  • Learning: The shopper learns about you and how you can supply the object of their desire. This includes the speed at which you can fulfill them.
  • Liking: The shopper likes what they learn about you and your products or services.
  • Preferring: The shopper’s experience causes them to prefer the product or service you offer.
  • Conviction: The shopper convinces themselves that your product or service is their best option.
  • Buying: The shopper purchases your product or service.

Necessity purchases are made to solve a problem. This buying mode is not addictive because the high is focused on the aftermath of the purchase. The shopper is happy to not have the problem anymore.  This shopper is more likely to have a customer service issue because their focus is on the end of the WBPL cycle, which is long term living with the purchase.  The shopper is concerned about the ability of the purchase to solve their problem over time.

The necessity shopper is trying to solve a problem.  Since they believe they are in a necessity buying mode, you can be certain they will be making  a purchase from someone.  Why not you?  This is a highly qualified prospect.

There are four points to the sales process for the necessity shopper.  These are:

  • Helping them understand their options and risks.
  • Help them to find the best solution for their needs.
  • Taking joint action with the shopper to actually solve their problem.
  • Make it easy to buy from you.

Helping the prospect understand their options and risks is an educational process. The prospect is explaining their situation to the sales person and the sales person is defining options that the shopper can be offered.  This dialog between the shopper and the salesperson is not a lecture, but rather a discussion between the individuals or groups.  The idea is to understand what solution characteristics are important to the shopper and how you can meet those demands. This is at its heart a consultative sales approach.

Part of the explanation of options is the discussion of benefits and risks associated with each option.  In the end, you want the shopper to make their own decision about what is right for their situation. Of course, you also want the shopper to purchase the product or service from you and your company.  When the shopper makes their own choice to do business with you, it is called “pull” selling.  The shopper is solving their problem, with your help (pull), as opposed to you solving their problem with their help (push).  The shopper, as a result, has some responsibility in the success, or lack thereof, of the solution.

Tying this together with the Shopper’s Journey, you have:

Awareness: The shopper knows you are able to help them.

Learning: The shopper learns about you and your specific options for helping them.

Liking: The shopper likes what they learn about you and your products or services.

Preferring: The shopper’s experience causes them to prefer the product or service you offer.

Conviction: The shopper convinces themselves that your product or service is their best option.

Buying: The shopper purchases your product or service.

In conclusion, it is important to know whether the shopper’s motivation to buy is necessity, or non-necessity, based.  From there the salesperson and enter into the conversation already taking place in the shopper’s mind. Then the salesperson can move the shopper through their journey to buying a product or service.

Designing a Business

I have been starting up a new business division in our company.  Nationwide Parts Distributors has been an inside sales business with connections dating back to 1992.  Now with the advent of Automotive Electronic Solutions, we are also a remanufacturer.

This is a completely different business model for Nationwide Parts Distributors.  We designed the work flow, defined the core competencies for each position, set up infrastructure, hired employees, and opened for business.  The ROI for the business turned out to be less than one month.

We did all of this in a new business format and performed well enough to maintain the highest possible rating with the Better Business Bureau. This is remarkable in that we avoided the typical start-up quality issues of a new business venture.

We are now in our third month of operation and have raised enough working capital to begin the process of purchasing the building we are operating in.  This will increase our valuation in the market place and reduces our monthly cost of operation.

It has been hard work managing  the changing design of the organization as we went through a steep growth curve. Even with a flexible, lean, organizational design, we have doubled the number of employees in the new business to accommodate the increase in throughput that our customers demand.

I am very proud of the team of professionals that work here at Nationwide Parts Distributors and Automotive Electronic Solutions. Their belief in the vision, and commitment to achieving it, has made it all possible.